Best WRITING/DIALOGUE in an RPG?

[Tysyacha]

Which one do you think gets top honor here?

[Sabretooth]

You will regret making this thread, Tysy.

My vote's for Knights of the Old Republic II, my love for Torment notwithstanding.

And a special mention for Deus Ex.

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[Tysyacha]

^^^^^^^^^^^^

Uh, the WRITING may be OK in Deus Ex, but the voice acting sucks tennis balls!!!!!!!!

[Sabretooth]

What a shame.

[Drunkside]

TSL definetely has its bright moments but the bipolarity of the choices the player can make sucks. So I say ME2, because Im commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel, and what the ****.

[Mav]

In recent memory? Uncharted 2, all-time, ionno I'd have to dig the recesses of my mind.

[Negative Sun]

Recently: Dragon Age

All time: KotOR

Mass Effect 2 gets a mention here, I don't work for BioWare...

[Miltiades]

Obsidian's writing has always been more my thing than BioWare's. So I'd pick KotOR II and Mask of the Betrayer.

[Tysyacha]

I'm glad you didn't pick Fallout: New Vegas. The writing in that game is so...meh!

[The Doctor]

I'll have to say KotOR II, if only for characters like Kreia and G0-T0.

[Tamenze]

Originally Posted by Mav

In recent memory? Uncharted 2, all-time, ionno I'd have to dig the recesses of my mind.

Seriously? No, seriously?

Uncharted deserves only one award. The award for the story with no research done.

Seriously, the game starts off with you wounded hanging on a bus in snowy mountains, while icy windows blow and you have to hangle yourself up.

Now this is even worse than Indy4's atomicfridge. Why? At least there it was only a few reasons indy would die. Here they are countless. It shouldn't even be possible for him to grab hold on ANYTHING without proper equipment, not to mention he would pass out almost immediatly.

Anyway, rant over.

Recently? Fallout: New Vegas (Parts of it. Overall flawless though) Dead Money, The Void, Alpha Protocol.
Special Mention: Ghost Trick Very well done Jap story with great translation. Going back to it I will find more flaws, but very impressive for a first playthrough.
All time: I'm torn between Planescape and Pathologic.

[Darth InSidious]

Planescape: Torment takes all comers when it comes to writing in games. No, really. The private sensorium alone is justification for calling the game one of the best out there.

...That it's more of an interactive book than a computer game some people might find to be a down-side, but this is clearly not a real problem.

KotOR II has some excellent writing, too - particularly Kreia, Atris (if male), and Sion (if female).

Bloodlines also deserves a mention - the radio is excellent in particular, and the pitch of the writing in general is just perfect. VO isn't bad, either.

[Bob Lion54]

Lord of the Rings Online - Yep, an MMO. MMOs don't usually have good writing because they don't really need it. Players tend to click a quest giver, scan for what they need to do, and then go and do it. Leveling takes priority over almost anything else in MMOs.

LotRO really made the story a priority and it shows. Random quest, if you actually read them, are quite well written. The Epic story line is also very well written. LotRO is a good example of an MMO that actually takes the time and succeeds where most games just don't care.

Playing Star Trek Online recently makes me miss the great writing in LotRO. Not for lack of effort, but STO's dialogue is just horrible and sounds nothing like what someone in Star Trek would say. LotRO captures the Lord of the Rings feel very well and while perhaps not always sounding like it was written by Tolkien, it definitely always feel like it was written by someone that understands the setting and the world of Middle-earth.


Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - In a word: Malkavians. Anything Jeanette says is great and when you play a Malkavian, the dialogue choices you have are wonderful and usually quite funny. Jokes aside, the insanity in the dialogue is pulled off quite well and not something that is as easy as it seems.

All the characters have good dialogue, really. Jack has some great lines and LaCroix is such a well written baddie that he's easy to dislike from the start. The thing that strikes me is that you can tell that a character's dialogue was written specifically for that character by a writer that understood the character.

All in all, it's a very well written game.

[Adavardes]

Originally Posted by The Doctor

I'll have to say KotOR II, if only for characters like Kreia and G0-T0.

QFT.

[mur'phon]

Tough one, but to me, good writing is not just the quality of the plot, dialogue of the npcs, but also the responses you are given as a player.

Planescape gets the award in my book, not only was the writing fantastic (heck they even made one of the most frustrating fetch quests ever enjoyable), but the devs trusted it enough to give the player the option to go through the last part of the game without even fighting the last boss just for the heck of it (ME, I'm looking at you). Another thing that made the game great was the option to lie, while usually it had no effect, sometimes it did, and it prevented those metagaming moments where you say something just because you're not certain if you can break your word later.

Runners up
Vampire the Masquerade is close, characters are believable, their motivations make sense, and you usually get the option to speak your mind, even if it is a flat out refusal to do the main quest (like refusing to do LaCroix' bidding). Sure the game works around that so you still do it (like LaCroix dominating your char), but even when it does it makes sense.

KotOR2: you all know why

Mask of the Betrayer: no I'm not an obsidian fanboy, all of their other expansions+the main game was painfull to play through, even though they lacked port everlast.